Tag Archives: shame

Shameful And Horrifying

Yesterday, the ignorant buffoon who occupies the Oval Office shamed America and made the world far less safe. Acting more like a mafioso than the chief executive of a powerful and legitimate country, Trump (and his pathetic mini-me Vance) showed the world that America is no longer a trustworthy ally.

In an exhibition that had clearly been planned in advance, America’s President disgraced the country, and dishonored the sacrifices of the thousands of American soldiers who died defending democracy and fighting autocratic regimes.

President Zelensky had come to a meeting prepared to knuckle under to what can only be called a shakedown: Trump’s demand that, if you want us to continue supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression, then hand over your valuable mineral rights. When Zelensky arrived, Trump accused him of expressing inadequate “gratitude.”

Let’s deconstruct that demand for “gratitude.” We have supplied Ukraine with weapons that were manufactured in the U.S.– Americans made money producing those weapons. Furthermore, support for Ukraine has been unequivocally in America’s interest, and in the interest of NATO–an organization immensely important to the U.S. and world peace that Trump clearly disdains.

It is possible, of course, that Trump’s behavior is simply attributable to his undeniable stupidity– clearly, he neither understands nor cares where America’s global interests lie. But it is more likely that–as various Russian defectors and intelligence agents have asserted–he is a bought-and-paid-for Russian asset. Either way, he is a traitor, destroying American government at home while betraying our allies abroad.

In either event, he is helping Putin win his war against America and the West without needing to fire a shot.

If there remains any doubt about Trump’s allegiance to Putin, it should have been erased when, during the press conference, Trump characterized himself and Putin as “co-victims” of the investigations into Trump’s ties with Russia, which he called the “Russia hoax.”  Trump actually said “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia.”

In the wake of yesterday’s shameful performance, Robert Hubbell summed up the cconsequencees.

Hubbell quoted Ron Filipkowski, who posted that  “Trump and Vance needed to create an incident to provide a justification for their pre-planned abandonment of Ukraine now, then separation from NATO in the near future.” Hubbell then wrote

Let’s be clear about the significance of Trump’s brutish behavior toward Zelensky:

Everyone in the world is less safe today because Trump’s fragile ego and non-existent negotiating skills could not tolerate a world leader speaking the truth to the American media in Trump’s presence.

Trump has officially switched sides in Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against the Ukrainian people, telling Ukraine that it is on its own in defending itself against Russia.

Putin is celebrating in the Kremlin because his puppet Donald Trump has finally delivered the “payoff” in the corrupt bargain they struck years ago. Former Russian President Medvedev summed up Moscow’s view of the exchange, saying, “The insolent pig [Zelensky] finally got a slap down in the Oval Office.”

The US no longer has any allies in the world. No ally can rationally trust any promise by any representative of the United States after Trump abandoned Ukraine over its refusal to capitulate to blackmail…

The metals exploitation deal was naked extortion: Trump had made clear before Friday’s meeting that Ukraine would lose US support in the Russian war of aggression if Ukraine did not grant the US hundreds of billions of dollars in mining rights as “repayment” for money and weapons granted to Ukraine without expectation of repayment.

Trump, as usual, was acting like a mafioso boss, extorting Ukraine (for the second time) by demanding a benefit to which the US was not entitled but which Trump believed he could extract by withholding future military support. (Trump used the same tactic in 2019 when he demanded that Ukraine fabricate evidence of Joe Biden’s non-existent wrongdoing.)

The appalling performance followed a first-ever vote in the United Nations in which the U.S. sided with Russia and China against its allies and fellow democracies.

As Hubbell wrote,

Hundreds of thousands of Americans sacrificed their lives to earn the trust that Trump and JD Vance squandered in 45 minutes in the Oval Office by berating the heroic leader of a brave people whose fight against Russia promotes the peace and security of the United States and its (now) former allies.

If we had a functioning Congress, this shameful and hugely damaging performance would be grounds for immediate impeachment. But of course, we don’t have a functioning Congress.

We the People need to take our country back. Somehow.

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Is Shamelessness The Answer?

In these daily musings and rants, I’ve frequently noted my inability to understand why anyone would look at Donald Trump–as he parades his monumental ignorance, his bile and his obvious mental illness–and say, “Yep. That’s the guy I want to trust with the nuclear codes.” I simply haven’t been able to get my head around it.

But over the holidays, I read a review in the Guardian of a book offering a plausible explanation. Let me share a (relatively lengthy) quote that describes the author’s theory:

Imagine a white, working-class American, most likely a man, from Louisiana or Alabama, perhaps, standing in a long line that represents his life’s journey. The man has been sold the American “bootstrap myth”, which states that his great country is a place where anyone can rise from the humblest of origins to become a billionaire or a president, and at the end of the line he expects to find a little part of that dividend for himself. But things aren’t panning out as he had hoped. For a start, the line stretches to the horizon, and even as he stands in it, he suffers: his pay packet is shrinking, the industry he works in is moving overseas, and the cost of everything from food to gas to healthcare is through the roof. Worse still, he can see people cutting into the line ahead, beneficiaries of “affirmative action” – black people, women, immigrants. He doesn’t think he’s racist or misogynist, but that’s what they call him when he objects. He is doubly shamed: privately, by his failure to live up to the myth; publicly, by liberal society.

This is the so-called deep story of the American right. We don’t have to accept the man’s worldview, just believe that this might be how he perceives it.

 Now a new figure enters the scenario, an orange-haired tycoon: we’ll call him Donald. Donald seems instinctively to understand the man’s shame. In fact, he’s a shame expert. He has a long history of transgression, and people have been trying to shame him for much of his life. But Donald has found a way around it: he has become shame-less. He demonstrates his shamelessness almost daily by producing a stream of shameful remarks – about Mexicans, say, or Muslims, or the sitting president, who happens to be black. Although people shout “Shame!” at him, each condemnation inflates Donald a little more in the eyes of his tribe, including the man in the line, who holds him up as a sort of shame messiah. By refusing his own shame, Donald absolves them, too.

The author of the book being reviewed, one David Keen, observes that the words “shame” and “shameless” are currently in greater use than at any time since the mid-19th century.

I have often theorized that the far Right is populated by people who are deeply unhappy with their lives–people who are looking for someone or some group to blame for their failure to achieve their goals. Keen’s analysis is consistent with that thesis, but adds another layer to it–the fact that failure to meet one’s own expectations (or those of the culture into which one has been socialized) will inevitably involve some measure of self-incrimination, or shame.

When you think about it, when people feel they’ve screwed up–when they fail at something they wanted or expected to accomplish–that failure is typically accompanied by feelings of unworthiness/shame, prompting a pretty human desire to find a scapegoat to whom they can “hand off” responsibility for the failure. Well-balanced adults can resist that urge, recognizing it for what it is, but a lot of people cannot–hence racism, misogyny, antisemitism.

The review made me wonder whether different cultural expectations might not ease those feelings of shame. What if we Americans didn’t “monetize” the concept of success? What if our expectations of other adults focused more on behaviors like loving-kindness or generosity or other markers of commendable adult behavior and less on career or money or fame?

What if we didn’t tell American children they could “grow up to be President”–didn’t burden them with expectations of professional or financial success, however we define that–but instead just told little boys and girls “when you grow up, I want you to be a good person–a mensch.”

What if we raised people who could be trusted with the nuclear codes?

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The Death Of Satire

A few days ago, I posted about the increasing prominence of what I can only call bat-shit crazy political beliefs–beliefs that evidently function to justify the adherents’ fear and hatred of various “others.”

The growth of what we might call the fantasy phenomenon has a number of consequences; for one thing, it makes it difficult–okay, impossible–to “reach out” and try to find common ground. What do those of us who live in what we fondly hope is the real world have in common with people who actually believe that an elitist “cabal” rules the world, and that its members keep children in basement hideaways so that they can periodically drink their blood? Because they also believe that drinking young blood keeps them young…

I’m not making that up; it’s a staple of the QAnon fantasy.

A troubling but far less consequential result of “the crazy” is its effect on satire. It would seem that our current political reality has killed satire. And that matters for far more than entertainment, because satire can be a particularly effective form of political criticism.

Satire is defined as the” use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.”  Exaggeration is particularly important to the creation of a satirical observation; it is by exaggerating an argument or behavior that the humorist identifies and amplifies what is ridiculous (or at least silly) about it.

So what do you do when reality overpowers your ability to exaggerate a position in order to demonstrate its essential nuttiness–when what people say or believe is already so outsized and insane that there’s nowhere else to go?

I think we are there. I was struck by a recent post to Daily Kos that featured a quiz: Is it satire or is it real?

Here’s the quiz:

1)  Eighty-five Percent of White Evangelicals Support Boastful, Lying, Thrice-married Serial Adulterer, Say He’s “Good Christian.”

2)  Republicans Who Oppose Using Tax Money to Aid Needy Americans Lament That Money Sent to Ukraine Could be Used to Aid Needy Americans.

3)  Congressman Who Claims He Didn’t Witness Systemic Sexual Abuse of College Athletes Named to Oversight Committee

4)  Mass Shooting Victims Offered Thoughts and Prayers by Thoughtless, Godless Politicians.

5)  Majority of Republicans Deem Colleges, Universities Harmful to Society, Prefer People Remain Ignorant.

6)  Republicans Who Warn of “Government Coming Between You and Your Doctor” Mandate Medically Unnecessary, Invasive, Trans-Vaginal Ultrasounds, Feel No Disconnect

7)  Congresswoman Who Angrily Disrupted State of the Union Bemoans Lack of Civility in Restaurant.

8)  Book Banners and History Deniers Decry “Cancel Culture.”

9)  Conservative Commentator Sexualizes M&Ms, Gives “Melts In Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands” Disturbing New Connotation

10)  Supporters View Man who Lost Money Owning Casino as Great Businessman

11) Reporters Routinely Hide Blockbuster News Until Book Published, Still Regard Themselves as Journalists

12) News Media Insists Upon Calling Most Radically Activist SCOTUS Justices in History “Conservative.”

13) Republicans who Tout Deregulation of Rail Safety, Environmental Protection Criticize Safety Regulators, EPA, For Not Doing Enough

14) Republicans in Uproar Over Mister Potato Head Call Other People “Snowflakes”

15) Tennessee Legislator Promotes Lynching as Capital Punishment Method, Remains Utterly Lacking in Awareness of Term “Utterly Lacking in Awareness.”

16) Georgia Congresswoman Proposes Red State/Blue State “Divorce,” Forgetting Her State Elected Democratic President And Two Democratic Senators.

Those of you who follow this blog, or political life in general, undoubtedly answered correctly that all of these examples are real world specimens snatched from today’s degraded political landscape. (Granted, the framing betrays some bias, but the identified behaviors are accurate.)

How can you possibly exaggerate today’s walking, talking buffoonery?

The purpose of satire has always been to make a point–to demonstrate the inanity or wrong-headedness of a particular behavior or belief, and (hopefully) to shame those who are engaging in that behavior or endorsing that belief. What we are discovering in our bizarro new political world is that the people who take these positions and/or trumpet these beliefs are either dishonest–playing to the MAGA crowd–or clueless true believers, and in either case, that they are utterly shameless.

Whatever the true beliefs of today’s performative political figures, the real question doesn’t focus on them. The conundrum is the question that several commenters to this blog routinely pose: what is wrong with the people who vote for these buffoons?

The real problem isn’t the embarrassing idiots who dominate the news cycles. It’s the large number of our fellow-Americans who are evidently impossible to embarrass.

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